Radiation is one of the six crises that this Platform addresses; each one could annihilate civilization as we know it. Radiation could do so in either an acute or chronic manner. The acute effects would come from a major accident, miscalculation, or terrorist attack or an actual nuclear war. The chronic effects are killing by inducing cancers and other medical conditions.
Radiation exposure is of course related to the other five global threat scenarios. Radiation is interconnected as part of a nuclear war that would immediately kill millions from radiation. A nuclear bomb is not just a bigger better bomb but emits radiation that kills locally and at a distance over time. Because of its power, it would put dust and smoke into the stratosphere that would cause a decrease of the sun’s penetration. A “nuclear winter” would result, causing death of millions by famine. Some people suggest that nuclear power is “green” —even the answer to climate change. But nuclear power plants could be a target of terrorists using cyberwarfare or crashing an airliner into a reactor.
Radiation is like Yin and Yang. It has detrimental effects—causing cancers, etc. — but also beneficial effects, as in helping make diagnoses through X-rays and nuclear imaging and also in treating cancers. Ionizing radiation has the ability to break apart molecules like DNA. There are different types of ionizing radiation: alpha and beta are weak energy but potent if taken internally, while X-rays and gamma radiation have strong energy and can kill acutely people as well as cancers, or can be used externally in diagnosis.
There are several principles that apply to radiation in humans. Radiation accumulates in the body and acts over time. Even small doses of radiation can become significant if one is exposed to them all the time. Radiation comes from several sources: background (about one to three milliSieverts, although it can be higher in specific regions) that affects us all, such as from the sun, or the ground such as radon gas that is the number two cause of lung cancer in Canada. We are also exposed individually when we get an X-ray or fly in an airplane.
If a food source that has been contaminated with radiation is eaten, it is absorbed by the organism that devours it. Thus, radiation is concentrated up the food chain. We humans are at the top of the food chain. We thus concentrate radiation over time.
People vary in their susceptibility, with fetuses being the most vulnerable, then children and women.
Radiation affects rapidly dividing cells and these are the dividing quickly in fetuses and children. Timing is important. Just as Fetal Alcohol Syndrome occurs when alcohol is ingested at the time an embryo is developing, and cannabis may affect the developing brain of people younger than twenty five, radiation acts similarly on different age groups, inducing miscarriages, mutagenesis, or teratogenesis.
Radiation also affects specific organs, depending on the radioactive substance that is absorbed. Iodine 131 affects the thyroid, whereas strontium 90 is analogous to calcium and is taken up by bone and thus affects the bone marrow and blood.
Some people believe in a hypothesis called homesis that says that small doses of radiation may be beneficial in causing mutations that will stimulate the immune system and that some mutations may improve our species. This is held by very few non-medical people. As medical doctors, we believe that there is a linear graph such that even small amounts of radiation over time can be harmful. We should try to minimize our exposure.
Safety limits are designed by people and are dependent more on politics, to prevent panic of the masses as opposed to being based on science. Limits of radiation vary from country to country and even in local municipalities. It is set to vary, depending on the job that one does. It is allowed for workers in nuclear plants to receive up to 100 mSv. (MilliSeverts) per year, while the limit for the general population is ten mSv.
Here are the effects of acute radiation on humans: The effects vary with the size of the dose — amount of exposure to the radiation. With 50-100 mSv (milliSieverts), there are changes in blood chemistry. At 500 mSv, one develops nausea, and then fatigue, followed by vomiting at 700 mSv., followed by hair loss and then diarrhoea over the following 2-3 weeks, as the most rapidly dividing cells are affected first. At 1000 mSv. you start bleeding. At 4,000 mSv, there may be death in 2-3 months. At 10,000 mSv., there is death within 1-2 weeks with destruction of the intestinal system and bleeding. At 20,000 mSv., the neurologic system is affected resulting in loss of consciousness, and death within hours to a few days.
Here are the effects of chronic radiation on humans: miscarriages; mutagenic (changes in the genetic material, usually DNA but also RNA, leading to mutations such as Down’s syndrome), teratogenic (which disturbs the development of a fetus, resulting in congenital malformations that can be passed down to future generations); cancers such as leukaemia, thyroid, breast, brain, pancreas; hardening of the arteries, leading to strokes and heart attacks; cataracts; kidney damage; and acceleration of the overall ageing process.
We also have a gradation of severity of nuclear accidents; The International Nuclear Event Scale (INES) rates the severity of accidents on a logarithmic scale from 1 to 7 with 7 being the worst; a major accident; (Chernobyl April 1986, and Fukushima March 2011). A level 6 serious accident was the Kyshtym disaster at the Mayak Chemical Combine in the Soviet Union in September 1957 at a nuclear waste reprocessing plant. Level 5, accidents with wider consequences, include Windscale fire at Sellafield on October 1957 in the United Kingdom, which caused a fire with graphite and uranium in a military air cooled reactor; the Three Mile Island on March 1979 nuclear power plant; Chalk River, December 1952, when the reactor core was damaged; and the Goiânia accident in Brazil in 1987 when a caesium chloride radiation source was taken from an abandoned hospital.
Please see also the following paper, which expands on the above summary:
Aging Hanford Tank Is Leaking Radioactive Waste Into The Ground, Feds Say
Annette Cary | Tri-City Herald | 29 April 2021
“An underground Hanford tank holding 123,000 gallons of radioactive waste appears to be leaking contaminated liquid into the ground, according to the Department of Energy.
This is the second of Hanford’s 149 single-shell tanks believed to be currently leaking waste, although in the past 67 tanks are suspected of leaking.
The most recently discovered leaker is Tank B-109, which was one of the earliest waste storage tanks built. It was constructed during World War II and received waste from Hanford site operations from 1946 to 1976.
Hanford’s 149 single-shell tanks were built to hold a mix of high-level radioactive and other hazardous chemical waste from chemically processing irradiated uranium to remove plutonium.
The Hanford site in Eastern Washington was used from WWII through the Cold War to produce about two-thirds of the plutonium for the nation’s nuclear weapons program.”
Read more
“The Washington state Department of Ecology and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, both Hanford regulators, were notified Thursday morning that the tank was likely leaking.
“There is no increased health or safety risk to Hanford workers or the public,” the Department of Energy said in a message to Hanford site employees Thursday.
Any contamination from the leak is expected to take more than 25 years to reach the water table, which is about 210 to 240 feet below the tank.
The groundwater flows slowly over decades toward the Columbia River from central Hanford, where Tank B-109 is located.
UP TO 3,000 GALLONS LEAKED
Tank B-109 was initially observed to be leaking up to 3.5 gallons of radioactive liquid a day, but may be leaking far less on many days, according to DOE.
At a maximum it may have leaked about 3,000 gallons of waste, said Ben Harp, the deputy manager of the DOE Office of River Protection.
It appears to be leaking waste at a higher rate than the other single-shell tank that has had a leak confirmed in recent years.
In 2013 when DOE confirmed that Tank T-111 was leaking, it said liquid levels were decreasing at a rate of 150 to 300 gallons a year, or half a gallon to a gallon a day.
From the 1990s to about 2005, DOE removed as much pumpable liquid as possible from the single-shell tanks, leaving radioactive sludge and saltcake in the tanks to address concerns about leaks.
“This is one we did empty out,” Harp said of Tank B-109.
DOE estimates that the tank, which has a capacity of 530,000 gallons, has about 2,000 gallons of liquid waste sitting above the sludge and saltcake solids that it holds.
In addition, an estimated 13,000 gallons of liquids may be held up in the tank’s solid waste, similar to the way a sponge holds water, Harp said.
Tank B-109 is not one of the previously suspected leakers.
HANFORD SOIL CONTAMINATED
But it is in an area that has soil already contaminated with radioactive material.
“Contamination in this area is not a new issue and mitigation actions have been in place for decades,” DOE said in its message to Hanford employees.
The 16 underground tanks that make up the B Tank Farm had 10 assumed leaker tanks previously. They are estimated to have leaked or spilled 157,000 gallons of liquid tank waste into the soil beneath them.
In addition two adjoining Tank Farms, the BX and BY tank farms with a total of 24 single-shell tanks, are believed to have leaked or spilled about 200,000 gallons of waste in the past.
However, the largest source of contamination comes from the historic practice of disposing of radioactive liquids in trenches and tile fields. At the B, BX and BY tank farms, an estimated 51 million gallons of contaminated liquids were poured into the ground.
With some contamination already reaching groundwater in central Hanford, DOE is pumping up contaminated water and cleaning it at the Hanford 200 West Pump and Treat plant.
One of the extraction wells to pump up contaminated groundwater is near Tank B-109.
There appeared to be a drop in the level of the liquid sitting atop solid waste, but monthly checks that started in March 2019 showed the level stable until July 2020. Then another drop was detected.
The level of waste in the tanks can fluctuate as small amounts of liquid from precipitation may enter the underground tanks, liquid evaporates, and waste moves and settles.
In July 2020 a formal leak assessment was launched. It included continued monthly checks of waste levels and lowering cameras through risers, or pipes from inside the tank to the ground surface, to observe the surface of the waste.
The final step in determining that the tank likely was leaking was a meeting of a contractor technical review board on Thursday to review data and findings.
WHAT’S NEXT FOR LEAK
DOE has some possible methods to address the leak and resulting soil contamination, Harp said.
DOE has installed three ground-level plastic or asphalt barriers over areas of two tank farms to prevent rain and snow melt from carrying contamination already in the soil deeper toward groundwater.
A barrier also could be installed over the B Tank Farm.
There is a barrier installed over the T Tank Farm, which was constructed before the leak from Tank T-111 was detected.
An exhauster also was installed in Tank T-111 to help evaporate tank liquids.
Less likely is removing as much liquid waste as possible from the tank and mixing it with a concrete-like grout for disposal, possibly outside of Washington state.
Emptying the tank is possible, but would be expensive.
To date most of the waste from at least 17 of the site’s 149 single-shell tanks have been emptied into sturdier and newer double-shell tanks until the waste can be treated for disposal.
DOE is working to start glassifying some of Hanford’s liquid tank at the $17 billion vitrification plant by the end of 2023, preparing the waste for permanent disposal.
Hanford has 27 double-shell tanks after a 28th tank was emptied and taken out of service when it sprang a leak between its shells, with the waste believed to be trapped between shells as the tank was designed to do.
However, Tank B-109 is in the 200 East Area about two miles from a double-shell tank.
Infrastructure associated with the tank dates from the 1940s. Constructing piping to move the waste from Tank B-109 to a double-shell tank could cost hundreds of millions of dollars, Harp said.
Now DOE is working on emptying single-shell tanks with updated infrastructure in place.”
Link: https://www.tri-cityherald.com/news/local/hanford/article251017489.html?
“Emptying the tank is possible but would be expensive.” So where would you put it? Double-shelled tanks cost hundreds of millions of dollars. But if you put it in the ground, we know where it is going to wind up. What other options are there?
Enriched Secrecy: BWXT’s Radioactive Plans
Zach Ruiter | Trent Arthur | 13 April 2021
“The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) recently granted a ten-year licence renewal to BWXT Nuclear Energy Canada on Monaghan Road in downtown Peterborough-Nogojiwanong.
The decision to grant the licence is contentious because it allows BWXT to spew toxic radioactive uranium particles into the water and disperse them in the air across the street from Prince of Wales Elementary School.
BWXT is the new owner and operator of what was General Electric-Hitachi Canada, the nuclear operation of the General Electric factory known for poisoning generations of workers and families in addition to contaminating the Little Lake and Otonabee River system with numerous toxic chemicals.
The added pollution will come from relocating their current uranium pelleting factory from Toronto to Peterborough-Nogojiwanong.”
Read more
Pelleting is the cooking of natural uranium fuel powder, at 1650 degrees centigrade, to form ceramic pellets that go into nuclear reactor fuel rods.
The factory will process over 150 tonnes of uranium per month to provide fuel for half of all nuclear energy produced in Canada.
The decision to allow nuclear fuel pellet production in the downtown core is being challenged in court by a local group called Citizens Against Radioactive Neighbourhoods (CARN) with the help of lawyers from the Canadian Environmental Law Association (CELA).
CARN alleges that the regulator unlawfully granted a ten-year licence to BWXT on the grounds that BWXT omitted details about the proposed operation’s physical design and environmental monitoring program which are required by the Nuclear Safety Control Act.
Although lawyers for CELA will ask the court to declare the licence to pellet unlawful, it is very unlikely that there is an Erin Brockovichesque moment in the cards because they are essentially arguing on a technicality.
That technicality will conceivably force BWXT to reveal potentially damaging information about their plans for the Peterborough-Nogojiwanong site that they would not like the public to know.
The information will include where they will be positioning the stacks that release uranium into the air.
In Toronto there are six stacks that release uranium into the air in all directions from the plant in a residential neighbourhood.
A detailed site and environmental monitoring plan would reveal if they are intending to release alpha-radiation emitting uranium particles in the direction of the Prince of Wales School or just on the rest of the downtown.
If required by the court, a detailed site plan may also reveal if BWXT is planning on moving the goal posts yet again to include working with highly radioactive enriched uranium to fuel a fleet of Small Modular Nuclear Reactors (SMNRs) currently in development.
BWXT is a leader in developing SMNR technology in Canada backed by the federal government. In a January 2020 interview CARN representative Jane Scott said, “I am sure it is their plan to work with enriched uranium because Canada is investing a lot of money in small modular reactors which require enriched uranium.”
According to Scott, “we can see a lot of hits on our http://www.nopellets.ca website from places in the US where small modular reactor businesses are located, a company called NuScale wants to make small modular reactors in Canada and has partnerships with Ontario Power Generation, Bruce Power, and BWXT in the United States.”
Scott first got involved in the fight against BWXT (formerly General Electric-Hitachi Peterborough) in 2010 when Arthur broke a story on how the company had received permission in secret in 2009 to process enriched uranium without consulting the public.
BWXT has refused to rule out the possibility of working with enriched uranium.
In January 2020 I asked BWXT spokesperson Natalie Cutler the following question, “Can you guarantee local communities that you will never bring any enriched uranium on site in Toronto or Peterborough in the future?”
Cutler claimed “We have no plans to seek a change to our licence to allow us to process enriched uranium.”
For context, BWXT also claimed it had “no plans” to conduct pelleting in Peterborough-Nogojiwanong but were seeking the “flexibility” to conduct pelleting in Peterborough-Nogojiwanong “should the need arise.”
According to Kerrie Blaise, the lawyer representing CARN, BWXT denied multiple requests to share their business plan with the public.
Citing BWXT’s proximity to the Prince of Wales Elementary School, CARN media representative Bill Templeman suggests that if BWXT wanted to conduct pelleting outside of Peterborough on “unused land,” it wouldn’t be an issue.
According to Trent Alum, Shaelyn Wabegijig, who is Algonquin Timiskaming First Nation Caribou Clan, German and Irish, the notion of “unused” land is a colonial concept rooted in the concept of “terra nullius” (no one’s land) and the Doctrine of Discovery which was used as justification for the colonial dispossession of sovereign Indigenous Nations.
Wabegijig, who works as the Program and Outreach Coordinator at the Kawartha World Issues Centre (KWIC), says the members of CARN are “people who are speaking out and trying to protect our community from danger and disease.”
According to Wabegijig, the people living near the plant deserve “communication and transparency on their own terms to determine if they want this in their neighbourhood, and a stark majority say no.”
Link: https://www.trentarthur.ca/news/enriched-secrecy-bwxts-radioactive-plans
French Nuclear Tests Contaminated 110,000 In Pacific, Says Study
BBC News | 10 March 2021
“France concealed the true impact of its nuclear tests in the Pacific from the 1960s to the 1990s, a study has said.
Researchers used declassified French military documents, calculations and testimonies to reconstruct the impact of a number of the tests.
They estimated that around 110,000 people in French Polynesia were affected by the radioactive fallout.
The number represented “almost the entire” population at the time, the researchers found.
French Polynesia, a French territory made up of hundreds of islands and atolls including Tahiti, was the site of dozens of nuclear tests over 30 years.
Over the course of two years, researchers analysed around 2,000 documents released by the French military and recreated the impact of “the most contaminating” of France’s nuclear tests carried out between 1966 and 1974.
The study was carried out in collaboration between French news website Disclose, researchers from Princeton University and British firm Interprt.”
Read More: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-56340159
How many citizens of France are aware that their government had put radioactive fallout onto 110,000 French Polynesians? We need a picture of Gauguin’s Tahitian ladies carrying nuclear contamination signs.
Remember the Rainbow Warrior!
More Poison from the Plant
Zach Ruiter | Arthur (Trent University) | 14 January 2021
“On the solstice, December 21, 2020, the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) gifted BWXT Nuclear Energy Canada with an extended licence to pollute in downtown Peterborough-Nogojiwanong.
That licence allows BWXT to significantly intensify their radioactive pollution across the street from the Prince of Wales Elementary School on Monaghan Road.
Pollution will intensify by adding uranium fuel processing to their current operations, known as pelleting.”
Read More Here: https://www.trentarthur.ca/news/more-poison-from-the-plant
Big Money, Nuclear Subsidies, and Systemic Corruption
Cassandra Jeffery and M. V. Ramana | Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists | 12 February 2021
“For years, the firm lobbied to get a subsidy to continue operating its unprofitable nuclear plants and maintain its revenue flow. When lobbying efforts failed to produce subsidies, it resorted to bribery to gain legislative support for House Bill 6, 2019 legislation that forces state consumers to pay into something called “the Ohio Clean Air Fund.” The green language is a smoke screen for the real purpose: to siphon nearly $150 million annually to FirstEnergy to keep its Perry and Davis-Besse nuclear power plants and two coal-fired power plants operating, while simultaneously gutting Ohio’s renewable energy standards. Also gone were the state’s energy efficiency programs, which had saved consumers and corporations millions of dollars. When citizens tried to organize a referendum to repeal the bill, FirstEnergy indulged in various dirty tactics to thwart this democratic opposition.
[…]
These companies and various associated organizations have engaged in extensive lobbying and large-scale propaganda campaigns to get governments pass legislation that makes consumers pay more for the electricity they use. In that sense, what has resulted would be better described as corporate welfare than as subsidies. The subsidies have improved these companies’ financial situation, which in turn contributes to their clout in state and national policy making and their ability to fund advocacy efforts—and even to pay politicians tidy sums of money. The larger significance of the political power these large utilities have amassed is their ability to block transition to a fully renewable and more environmentally sustainable energy system.”
Read More: https://thebulletin.org/2021/02/big-money-nuclear-subsidies-and-systemic-corruption
This way to treat Hanford radioactive waste could save $210 billion. But is it safe enough?
Annette Cary | Tri-City Herald | 7 January 2021 | https://www.tri-cityherald.com/news/local/hanford/article248276995.html
“Grouting rather than glassifying a large amount of radioactive waste at the Hanford nuclear reservation could save taxpayers $73 billion to $210 billion, according to a new Department of Energy report.
Turning millions of gallons of waste into a concrete-like grout form also could cut 10 years off the time needed to treat radioactive waste now stored in underground tanks and permanently dispose of it, the DOE report estimated.”
Read more
DOE recently submitted a report to Congress on potential opportunities for different ways to treat waste now held at Hanford and other DOE nuclear sites.
The report was required three years ago by the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act to look at the feasibility, costs and cost savings of reclassifying high level radioactive waste to allow it to be treated and disposed of in ways not allowed for high level waste.
“Let’s trust the science and move forward,” said Washington state Sen. Sharon Brown, R-Richland, who has advocated for classifying some tank waste as low level waste to allow more efficient treatment.
The cost savings identified in the report “are a big step in the right direction, and would assist both DOE and its regulators in focusing on the mission of protecting those mist impacted — local citizens and tribal members,” said Richland Councilman Bob Thompson, chairman of Hanford Communities, a coalition of Hanford area local governments.
“We need the Hanford Site cleaned up, and I’m concerned that it will be very difficult to achieve given current cost estimates,” he said. “We should be exploring alternatives that can reduce costs and expedite the cleanup while maintaining safety and effectiveness.”
The latest cost estimate for the remaining environmental cleanup at the Hanford site, which was released two years ago, said taxpayers will need to spend $323 billion to $677 billion.
The 580-square-mile Hanford nuclear reservation in Eastern Washington was used from World War II through the Cold War to produce two-thirds of the plutonium for the nation’s nuclear weapons program.
But Hanford Challenge, a Seattle-based watchdog group, found the report “shocking,” said its executive director, Tom Carpenter.
The report discusses reclassifying up to 80% of the 56 million gallons of Hanford tank waste to allow it to be stabilized in a concrete-like grout form, rather than vitrifying, or glassifying it.
That could open the door to grouting waste in tanks rather than emptying the tanks, Carpenter said.
RECLASSIFYING WASTE
Any waste produced when fuel irradiated at Hanford reactors was chemically processed to remove plutonium is classified as high level radioactive waste under U.S. law.
But internationally, waste classification is based not on how waste is produced as it is for high level waste in the United States, but on its radiological risk.
“It makes sense to me that we would manage and treat Hanford’s waste based on its physical characteristics, rather than how it was produced,” said David Reeploeg, the Tri-City Development Council vice president for federal programs.
Already much of the tank waste at Hanford, while by definition is high level, is referred to as low activity radioactive waste and managed as it if is low level rather than high level waste by agreement between the state of Washington and the federal government.
In 2019, DOE adopted a new policy that allows it to reclassify radioactive waste if it determines it does not exceed certain radionuclide concentrations for low level waste or does not need to be disposed of in a deep geological repository, such as the one proposed at Yucca Mountain, Nev.
However, Congress has banned the new policy from being used in Washington state under the two most recent National Defense Authorization Acts.
High level waste can still be reclassified but under a more involved process that relies on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
The new DOE report to Congress stresses that reclassifying tank waste for grouting is not a proposal, only a look at potential opportunities.
Before any action is taken DOE would need to gather more data, do more analyses and discuss the proposed change with those interested in Hanford, the report said.
GROUTING TANK WASTEThe report looks at the possibility of reclassifying much of the waste stored in underground tanks in part of central Hanford, the 200 West Area, and then grouting it for disposal rather than turning it into stable glass logs at the $17 billion vitrification plant under construction.
Hanford has 56 million gallons of radioactive waste stored in underground tanks, split between the 200 East Area and the 200 West Area, which are about seven miles apart.
The underground tanks include 149 single shell tanks which are prone to leaking. They are being emptied into 27 newer double-shell tanks for more secure storage until the waste can be treated for permanent disposal.
Most of the double-shell tanks — all but three — are in the 200 East Area.
In addition to the three double-shell tanks, the 200 West Area also has 83 of the Hanford site’s single-shell tanks, some of them with a capacity of 1 million gallons.
Grouting 80% of the 200 West Area tank waste would allow the waste to be treated in a less-complex, lower temperature and lower risk method, the DOE report said.
The vitrification plant heats waste and glass forming materials to 2,100 degrees Fahrenheit to produce a stable glass form.
Some of the cost savings of grouting could come from not having to expand the vitrification plant, according to the DOE report.
The plant was never planned to be large enough to treat all of the low-activity tank waste at Hanford.
Grouting large amounts of the 200 West Area tank waste also could eliminate the need to replace or repair seven miles of cross-site transfer line, according to the report.
The pipe would move the waste from the 200 West Area to the 200 East Area for storage in double-shell tanks and treatment at the vitrification plant, which is in the 200 East Area.
Grouting the waste also could allow the waste to be sent off of Hanford for disposal, leaving less waste permanently disposed in the Eastern Washington nuclear reservation, the DOE report said.
Now the low-activity waste glassified at the vitrification plant is planned to be disposed of in a lined landfill in central Hanford.
But the state of Washington objects to waste being buried there unless it is vitrified or can be shown to be as protective of the environment as glass.
HANFORD GROUTING TESTDOE has grouted three gallons of radioactive waste in a test, using an engineered grout form that is protective of the environment, it said.
The waste was sent from Hanford to nearby Perma-Fix Environmental Solutions in Richland to be encapsulated in a specialized grout. It then was sent to a Waste Control Specialists disposal cell in Texas that was built for low-level radioactive waste from federal government sites.
Congress has already appropriated money to continue the demonstration of the grouting project on more waste, said Gary Petersen, president of Northwest Energy Associates, a nonprofit, Hanford advocacy group formed by Tri-Cities area business leaders.
He questions why the second phase of the test, which would involve grouting 2,000 gallons, has not started.
The 200 West tanks are a great place to demonstrate the grouting project because DOE currently does not seem to have a plan for treating the waste in tanks that is far from the vitrification plant, he said.
HANFORD CHALLENGE CONCERNS
However, Hanford Challenge is skeptical that it is practical to grout millions of gallons of waste and ship it off site, saying the more likely outcome of reclassifying so much tank waste would be to grout the waste within the tanks and leave it in the ground at Hanford.
The grout could fail within a matter of decades, he said, which would put more groundwater at Hanford at risk of contamination.
Although reclassifying tank waste is not currently allowed in Washington state, it is being used successfully already at DOE’s Savannah River, S.C., nuclear site, Brown pointed out.
The first use of DOE’s new reclassification policy resulted in eight gallons of recycled wastewater from vitrification at Savannah River being grouted and sent to the Waste Control Specialists repository in Texas.
Just as reclassification of waste was done at Savannah River, it “can be successfully utilized in a safe manner as well at Hanford,” Brown said.
1960
Huh? This doesn’t explain what the hell “grouting” is. Encapsulating the waste in a “specialized grout”? Tell us more about this “grout.”